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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398960">blood&amp;tea&amp;coffee</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceRosalium/pseuds/PrinceRosalium'>PrinceRosalium</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blood&amp;tea&amp;coffee [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dialogue Heavy, Everyone Is Gay, Gay Male Character, Human/Vampire Relationship, M/M, Modeling, New York City, Original Character-centric, Original Fiction, Original Universe, Therapy, Vampires</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:48:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26398960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceRosalium/pseuds/PrinceRosalium</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When model Dashiell finds himself in a difficult place in life, he seeks out a therapist to help him work out his problems. While he assumed it would be generally good for his mental health to have a professional help him work through the stresses of his unfulfilling job, his unhealthy coping mechanisms, and even a lifelong unrequited (?) love for his childhood friend that's been eating away at him since middle school, what he doesn't know is that the particular therapist he's dealing with has a little bit more life experience than he anticipated. Let's just say when your therapist is a 300+ year old vampire, they have a little bit more to teach you when it comes to surviving the ups and downs of life's hellish rollercoaster, and Dashiell is about to be taken for the ride of the century.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blood&amp;tea&amp;coffee [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918642</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>blood&amp;tea&amp;coffee</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Still caked with an uncountable amount of layers of the New York City air, Dashiell’s hands fiddled with each other while he gazed down at the floor.<br/>
“...And yeah. Then he asked me what was wrong, I said I was shaking because I just had too much caffeine, and then I went to bed early and watched videos until I fell asleep and I have… absolutely no excuse.”<br/>
He really wished he did, but he spent the whole 10 block walk to the office trying to think of something that was at least marginally reasonable. He hoped he’d come off as if his mind were empty, but there were plenty of words in his head; plenty of words he could use to tell his therapist why he hasn’t told his roommate and friend of 12 years that he’s been madly in love with him for as long as he can remember, but nothing ever seemed to make him feel any less ashamed of himself.<br/>
“So... You had the whole thing set up. You made dinner that night and made sure nobody was coming over. You made sure he was in a good mood after he got home from work. You set an alarm on your phone with a note that told you not to back out, and then? You backed out, huh?”<br/>
The therapist swiveled lightly in his office chair, to and fro, clicking his pen as he tilted his head toward his client. Dashiell lifted his head, his eyes catching onto the face of a taxidermied bat that seemed to stare at him from the bookshelf. He scoffed at it and shook his head, as if the bat were a conscious third party witnessing his cowardice. “Yeah, totally. I pussied out.”<br/>
“Good, I think you did it wrong. I think you have plenty of excuses”<br/>
“What?”<br/>
“Good grief, Dashiell, name half of a romance story where a love confession plays out like that. You’ve got to learn how to read the room.”<br/>
He didn’t know what to reply with, so he moved his gaze from the bat to the floor. Maybe if he looked lost enough, it would make his therapist break it down into idiot words for his self-proclaimed idiot brain to comprehend.<br/>
“I get it, I know…” The shrink nodded warmly as he moved his long blond hair to one shoulder. “This is the part of the session where you stare off into the distance, longing to be psychoanalyzed as your brain has turned to mush…”<br/>
“Val, please, It’s been a long day.”<br/>
“Alright, alright.”<br/>
Pushing his brushed-leather shoes into the carpet, Val became impossibly taller whenever he stood. On the rare occasion that he stood during a therapy session, Dashiell always felt completely engulfed in his shadow, especially since the sheer amount of hair growing from this man’s head increased the space he occupied by quite a large percentage. Taking his time, Val shuffled over to the bookshelf and reached for the taxidermied bat. “I’m going to do this so you look at me and not at Nancy,” he said, turning the bat to face away from them. “Nancy is not a part of this conversation… nosy girl…”<br/>
Dashiell smiled. Though Val didn’t look much older than him, he always seemed to exhibit the charming idiosyncrasies of some cheerful old grandpa. He wondered how someone could simply float about life like that. Whatever he was smoking, he definitely wanted in.<br/>
As soon as he returned to his seat, Val closed his eyes and pressed the tip of his middle finger to his forehead for a good ten seconds and, as per usual, he began his lecture the very moment his hand left his face.<br/>
“You say you have no excuse, but have you considered that your excuses all involve admitting that you were too afraid to go through with… what was an idea doomed to fail from the start?”<br/>
Yes. Yes he had.<br/>
“You couldn’t blame it on him having to jet off somewhere or… his pet goldfish dying just as you were about to confess your undying love to him, so suddenly, you had no excuses, because there were none that would… excuse you! There was nothing in your arsenal of reasons for not going through with a plan that, in my personal opinion, was an absurd expectation of yourself that sounds much more like how parents tell their children they are adopted than how you confess love to someone, and so your response was to immediately push yourself back into shame so you can properly wallow in self-loathing, because you can’t possibly think of anyone else at fault but you every single time…”<br/>
Val paused his speech and wildish hand gestures for a moment to glance at the chandelier above him and let the words fall in place like Tetris blocks in his head. It was about 7:20 at night, and he had only woken up about an hour before. He was good at hiding his grogginess in appearance, but when it came to speaking, it was easy for him to lose his train of thought and start speaking nonsense.<br/>
“...The problem is not that you’re too cowardly to tell Lupine that you’re in love with him, it is that you set ridiculous expectations of yourself. You seem to have this idea that— and please, correct me if I’m wrong— you have no choice, it is absolutely the only option for you to sit him down and tell him this monstrous secret simply because it has existed for too long for your liking, when in reality, your environment would never be able to sustain any beneficial results from that approach. The road you’re trying to drive on isn’t paved yet, so a thousand little tiny rocks are flying up and leaving little dents and paint chips on your car that you could have avoided if you would have taken another road, and on top of that, it leads straight into the most awkward, unromantic night of your life.”<br/>
Dashiell sighed and blinked a few times in resignation. “Yeah, you pinned it, but what else am I supposed to do?”<br/>
“Goodness, Dashiell, you’re a gorgeous and successful male model, have you not the wherewithal to even just attempt to seduce the man in the fifteen years you’ve known him?”<br/>
Dashiell rolled his eyes. “Oh my goodness-”<br/>
“You’ve never gotten a tiny bit glowy after a few glasses of champagne and looked a little too cute on a Friday night on purpose, and made sure he knew damn well that that was exactly what you were going for? You’ve never even attempted to approach him while he’s smoking a cigarette on the porch looking out at the night sky to make unprompted conversation about cherished memories while you look into his eyes for a little too long?”<br/>
“That’s pretty specific-”<br/>
“But are you gathering what I’m saying? That communicating romantic attraction to someone can, and in this specific case, should be a show-not-tell situation?”<br/>
“...”’<br/>
Dashiell could back down and say he was right, because he was, but he also… wasn’t.<br/>
By nature, Dash was a flirty person, though with varying levels of confidence. If he was going for a hook-up with a guy he’d never see again, it wasn’t hard for him to convince himself and his partner that he was some mystical dark-haired succubus. Lupine was another story, but not necessarily the opposite. There was no tiptoeing, no getting tongue tied and freezing up every time Dashiell had sensed he had gained Lupine’s affection or approval. Rather, his acts of affection were so natural that neither of them knew how to put them into romantic context. “...Sometimes, we have wine before bed and I wear a silk bathrobe and lay next to him… and we talk about his day at the shop and burn incense… Or sometimes, I’ll take a bubble bath and put a sheet mask on and he’ll come in, and we’ll hang out… Sometimes I ride on the back of his motorcycle… That’s pretty romantic, right?”<br/>
Val raised an eyebrow, both confused and refreshed by Dashiell’s response. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume you were married.”<br/>
“So you see… It isn’t so much that I’m not showing him any type of romantic interest. It’s more that I have no idea how to get him to interpret it that way other than sitting him down and setting the record straight.”<br/>
“And that is a nightmare, very not glamorous, and could definitely yield mixed results if done incorrectly.”<br/>
“Definitely. I am genuinely unsure if he is interested in me romantically, and I’d rather keep the comfort level that I’m at than ruin it.”<br/>
Crossing one leg over the other and sitting back in his chair, Val pressed his pen to his lips and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Something… has to blow up.”<br/>
Dashiell didn’t even think of opening his mouth to respond to that one. He knew an entire essay was going to come out of Val’s mouth before he could even ask him what he meant.<br/>
“Shifting this relationship into romantic context isn’t as simple as seduction or a love confession… It’s more like… a ticking time bomb. It’s only a matter of time before something has to… happen, but what…?<br/>
I must admit, hearing you say that you’re genuinely unsure of his romantic interest in you almost made me laugh. I was almost ready to tell you ‘Dash, sweetie, are you that stupid? He’s in love with you’ but I stopped myself, I did, because who am I to say that based on the little information on the situation I’ve been given? Nothing you’ve been describing is inherently romantic, even if it could definitely be seen as such… Has he dated anyone over the course of both of you knowing each other?”<br/>
“In high school, he dated a few girls and one guy, but none of their relationships lasted more than a few weeks, maybe a month tops… In college, he would hook up with a lot of people, which kind of made me feel like I should hook up with people, so that’s… where that unhealthy coping mechanism came from… but other than that...” Dashiell’s words trailed off.<br/>
Val tilted his head in the other direction as if to click his train of thought back onto its rails. “Delightful. So there’s been absolutely no reason to bring up dating and relationships from that point on?”<br/>
“Yeah, pretty much.”<br/>
“Interesting…Okay… ” Val pressed his tongue to his cheek and nodded, making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with Dashiell. It was times like this when he questioned Val’s status as a mental health professional.<br/>
“Let’s recap, to clarify… You want to stop keeping this secret from your roommate, and you want this relationship to make it out alive whether it turns romantic or not. But...the climate just isn’t right for you to just tell him because you seem to be in very muddy waters, and attempting to show him is apparently just as vague… and you can’t just… walk up and kiss him, that would be weird…”<br/>
“Yes, that would be disastrous.”<br/>
Val looked up at the clock above his door. “... I want you, if you can… To find a situation to bring up dating to him in a way that isn’t out of place. Something… innocent. Like maybe… bringing up a friend’s relationship, expressing your feelings on it. Maybe through conversations like that, you can start to gauge whether it’s a good idea to pursue a romantic relationship with him at this time, whether it aligns with his wants and needs in some way, and it will make you more comfortable talking about this topic in general. As for now…” He swung his eyes playfully back to Dashiell. “We are out of time.”<br/>
With that, Dashiell stretched his legs and let out a sigh of resignation. Finally, his daily duties were almost through, and it was time to pass out on the train home. All he had to do now was get through the crowds at Penn Station, and maybe grab a decaf latte while he was at it. Though he seemed barely alive, his therapist was as bright and chipper as ever.<br/>
“Well done today! I always have trouble getting you to open up about this topic, because I know it makes you so stressed to talk about, especially when our sessions are usually scheduled after you’ve had a hard day at work.” Val praised his client with a warm smile and a light little clap.<br/>
“How the fuck are you not exhausted?”<br/>
“I woke up a half an hour before you got here,” Val chuckled.<br/>
Dashiell took out his phone and checked the time as he rose from his seat. It was 9:04PM. “... Is that even healthy? Aren’t you supposed to be a therapist?”<br/>
“It’s healthy if you’re a vampire, and that I am,” Val answered with the utmost conviction in his voice.<br/>
“Ugh, is that why you’re 35 and don’t have to cover your dark circles?”<br/>
“In fact, it is,” he replied, shooing Dashiell away with one graceful hand. Val was already writing him into his schedule for the next week in an attempt to show Dashiell that his attention span no longer belonged to him. “Now go home before I bite you. Your exhaustion makes you an easy target.”</p>
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